The Revolt of the Globalized

By Luis Hernandez Navarro, Thursday 2 December 1999

(Originally published in Spanish by La Jornada, Translated by
irlandesa)

The 21st century did not begin on November 9, 1989, with the fall of
the Berlin Wall. Nor will it begin on the first of January of the
year 2000. The new century was born on November 30, 1999 with the
revolt of the globalized in Seattle, Washington.

The boycott of the opening of the World Trade Organization (WTO)
summit - staged by 50,000 demonstrators—is not the last protest
by the forgotten of the earth, but rather the great premiere in
“society” of world resistance to a globalization model
being led by transnational coalitions. Ecologists, farmers from the
First World, unionists, homosexuals, NGOs supporting development,
feminists, punks, human rights activists, representatives of
indigenous peoples, the young and not young, people from the United
States, Canada, Europe, Latin America, Europe and Asia - all unleashed
a peaceful protest against the new Babylon.

Beyond their national diversity or their political differences, the
demonstrators share their rejection of the slogan “All power to
the transnational corporations!” present on the free trade
agenda in the abstract. They believe that an ideological alibi is
concealed behind the worship of
God-Market-creator-of-the-society-of-the-future. An ideology that is
trying to limit social victories, levels of wellbeing, environmental
standards and the range of intervention of national policies, for the
benefit of the great financial capital.

Behind the Seattle protest, there is a convergence of planetary
networks and coalitions, built throughout the last two decades. In
the United States, for example, the struggle against GATT, against
NAFTA with Canada and with Mexico, and against the Initiative of the
Americas, has a long organizing tradition that goes far beyond the
traditional “protectionist” logic. Its origins go back to
the effective boycott organized against Nestle in the early seventies.
Its second moment came during their opposition to GATT. Many groups
of agriculturists, environmentalists and consumers in that country
considered the Uruguay Round of 1985—1986 - promoted by the
Reagan administration—to be a government maneuver for achieving
reform in agricultural policies through international
negotiations—reduction of subsidies—that could not be
achieved within the United States. Broad international coalitions
were built during this struggle, with organizations of rural producers
in Europe and Japan, who form the backbone of the new mobilizations.

In many industrialized countries, international commercial agreements,
without checks and without compensation policies, are seen by many
citizens as an instrument that allows international bureaucracies
associated with the large corporations to mock the social controls won
over years of struggle. Modern computer networks, the proliferation
of hundreds of NGOs and the ease in moving about the world, have made
possible the formation of pockets of resistance which transcend
national boundaries and which have created a new internationalism.

The mobilizations against the WTO in Seattle have been preceded by
hundreds of new struggles of a new kind all over the world. A few
months ago, a French farmer destroyed a McDonald's in his
community, in order to protest against the food degradation promoted
by this franchise. The conflict attained national visibility and
achieved international notoriety. Its main protagonist, a believer in
self-management and an old activist from the movement of ‘68,
became a modern campesino hero. In India, hundreds of rural men have
burned the camps where Monsanto is experimenting with transgenetic
cotton, while thousands more have taken over the facilities of the
Cargill seed marketer. The trade in genetically modified organisms
has brought about an unstoppable avalanche of commercial disputes.
Indigenous organizations in South America have presented—and
won—legal suits against attempts to patent life forms. Hundreds
of personalities and organizations have participated in the encuentros
against neoliberalism convened by zapatismo.

The destruction of the old Nation-State, the creation on a large scale
of millions of new excluded and the ideology of neoliberal
globalization have produced a new transnational political actor: the
globalized. The Revolt of Seattle is an announcement that
his—and her—hour has arrived.